Last night Giant Robot held a Pre-E3 event with Gaijin Games and Attract Mode, and our own Aileen Viray managed to sweeten the event and grab some photographs for us [ed]
For some background for the non-art nerds, Giant Robot was started by Eric Nakamura and Martin Wong. I’ve seen Eric around at different art events in Los Angeles and associate him as the face of Giant Robot.
On a small strip of Sawtelle Blvd. in West Los Angeles, lies three Giant Robot stores: Giant Robot, Giant Robot 2, and gr/eats.
Giant Robot 2 (the gallery and art store) and gr/eats (Giant Robot’s quaint cafe) are where the festivities took place.
The stores are connected by a parking lot, which was blocked off for Gaijin Games to project large screens of BIT.TRIP games on two adjacent walls.
After a brief talk about supporting indie developers and games from Gaijin’s founder Alex Neuse, anyone was able to pick up the Wii controller and make everyone dance along to the sweet tunes of BIT.TRIP in the near-perfect weather of the warm June night.
In addition to the screens outside, there was a corner inside of GR2 with game stations.
GR’s Eric was roaming around the event with his camera in hand and I was able to catch him for a quick chat. The atmosphere was inviting, feeling like a community where it was easy to interact with gamers and spectators with ease.
It was convenient that gr/eats was next door – I’d been starving since I got there, and they had a free sampling of “BIT.TRIP” beets, featuring several beet-based dishes. The idea to have a game-inspired dish was very creative. I couldn’t help but smile when asked, “Wanna sample some beets?”
Supposedly, GR will bring game developers for similar events every two months and judging by how much fun I had tonight, I’ll be back for another. What game-inspired food do you think they will have for the next event? I can’t think of an indie game right now…
If you want to check the sites out and find out more be sure to hit GR2 and gr/eats.
